'realasicminer' has just found its first block, let's hope this was just bad luck and things go back to normal.

I like BitMinter (that's why I elected it as primary pool), but I must admit that:

I had the impression that BitMinter was REALLY unlucky for the past 2 weeks,

As one user out of thousands, I'm not willing to pay >1BTC on my expenses to find out why some pool would have a problem (and not getting ROI), I think the pool operator should do it on pool fee's expenses, now that the fees are in place (with all due repect the DrHaribo's work),

Switching pools (and losing the NMC) seems to make more sense for an individual, GPU miner. The end is near anyway.

See this is what I was wondering. Is it true I should switch to different pool with 300 mhash/sec? Or will we just find more blocks to make up for less per block

See this is what I was wondering. Is it true I should switch to different pool with 300 mhash/sec? Or will we just find more blocks to make up for less per block

Switching to another PPLNS pool with more or less hashrate should not change anything. If you want security and are willing to pay the fees, you should move to a pure PPS pool. That's why I'm considering, I prefered BitMinter, but I'm curious about the "too unlucky" issue discussed at the moment.

The rewards graph is only the last 500 shifts. Currently, as I write this, it goes back to shift 14399 which was 2013-04-18 20:38 UTC. That's only 16 days. I'll agree the last 5 days or so were bad, but let's not go overboard.

I'll get some more data to show how the luck has been. In the meantime please give the FUD some rest.

The rewards graph is only the last 500 shifts. Currently, as I write this, it goes back to shift 14399 which was 2013-04-18 20:38 UTC. That's only 16 days. I'll agree the last 5 days or so were bad, but let's not go overboard.

I'll get some more data to show how the luck has been. In the meantime please give the FUD some rest.

I said that actual rewards have trended below expected for several months. That is true. And it continues to be true.

If everything was kosher, you would expect to see that trend chart having equal areas above, and below the expected reward line. I have never looked at the chart and seen it ahead at the end of a 500 block period.

It's not FUD to give you fair warning that you are likely being exploited in some fashion.

Graet was robbed for months by miners hopping payout methods and didn't notice until they broke the bank. You need to be more vigilant.

Edit: The 500 block shortfall is also remarkably consistent at slightly greater than 10%. I mined several thousand coins with Bitminter before deciding the pattern was too suspicious to tolerate. That's the price of a nice car that is missing, and I was only 3% of your pool at my peak.

The miner collects coins for shares submitted to the pool. And chooses not to submit winning block solutions. It would be done only out of pure malice. But there is plenty of malice around here lately. Any pool operator that isn't considering worst case scenarios is going to get run over by some bad actors.

On the long run, if the attacker submits enough 'rotten' shares (i.e. discarding winning ones), wouldn't it easily be detected by the lower than expected (i.e. zero, if the attacker discards all winning shares) found blocks / submitted proofs of work?